18/09/03

It’s now 10.45 Thursday night, the week is almost over. It’s all been going fairly well. I’m not feeling all that great at the moment, aches and pains, fingers crossed it’s not a dose of food poisoning. Les wasn’t feeling good today at all, so here’s hoping! Ah well, it’s bound to happen eventually...

Tuesday night’s class was great, so having taught every class at least once now they are all good save for the one quiet one. After class Tuesday night Les and I jumped in a cab back to his place. He asked if I wanted to stay down there Tuesday and Wednesday nights so we could hit the shops Wednesday and pick up a bunch of necessities. By the time we got back to his place, and had a bit of dinner, we were both fairly exhausted. I hit the sack. Christine (Les’ wife) works late night radio, and doesn’t get home until around midnight on weeknights, so Les stayed up.

It was nice to get a bit of a sleep in Wednesday morning. Was up at about 10.30. Checked my email for the first time in a while, I still haven’t got internet back at the university which is really frustrating (considering it took 5 days to get a toilet fixed I’m not all that optimistic). It was nice to read through a few and send a few off. Check a bit of the news back home. It’s strange being totally out of the loop news-wise. We heard there was a SARS case in Singapore..... not all that encouraging. Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong (the province Shantou is in), is about a 40 minute flight from here, and was the origin of the first wave last year. We’ve all got our fingers crossed that there wont be a second!

After lunch, Christine took me down to the hairdresser to give me a hand getting a haircut (apparently the baby mullet wasn’t attractive as I had thought, and Les having told all his students the meaning of the word ‘mullet’ signified time for a change), she told the hairdresser what I wanted and I did all the hard work. The hair cut was fine, the styling he did was a little out there, but a quick and through the hair solved that problem. I didn’t think $AUS 4 was a bad price for a haircut, and this was a pretty nice salon.

We then made our way over to a few antique/collectible stores with the idea of finding a few things for the apartment. We dropped Christine at the bus stop on the way, she was off to work. Anyone who has shopped with me knows I am about as good at shopping as a fish is at climbing trees. If I ever start earning huge amounts of money, I would really like someone else to spend it for me, because I really don’t like shopping (hint hint... all the girls that have seen through the accent and charming personality.... i.e. All of you). Les said he could probably do the place for me if I wanted, which I’m seriously considering taking him up on. After checking out a few stores we hit Wal-Mart. We spent about 20 minutes trying to communicate that we were after an Ethernet chord and an electronics store, then dove into the superstore.

After about an hour, and 540 RMB, I had just about everything I needed. We struggled our way up to street level with far too many bags (Wal-Mart is in the basement), and feeling a little tired I grabbed a coke and fries from McD’s (believe it or not it tasted exactly the same as it does everywhere else in the world!) for a quick energy boost. After jumping in a cab, getting back to Les’ apartment and dragging everything upstairs we were both pretty tired. Les went through all the food I had bought, sorted it out (he really is the kind of guy who will do just about anything to give you a hand) and put it in the freezer. I watched ‘The Sum of all Fears’ on VCD after which we sat there for about 3 hours and talked about pretty much everything there was to talk about. Midnight hit pretty quickly and with a 6.30 rise this morning I made tracks.

We left Les’ place at 7.20, got to mine at about 7.40, dropped of all the stuff I’d bought and headed over to the Medical building for class. The computer had arrived in the office which was nice, pretty good machine to, P4 Acer Aspire, I set it up, however they’re weren’t enough outlets so she’s not in action quite yet. I then went back to the apartment and slept the day away. It had been a pretty busy couple of days. The evening class was fine. Les was not feeling good at all so I took all his students in my class for the second hour, which was fine, made the classroom pretty warm but. Came back here and have just been watching a bit of TV. Soccer is on quite a bit, of course with Chinese commentary, so I watch a bit of that (Premier League, Champions League, etc.), and have just finished watching the 3rd season of Black Adder on DVD which I brought with me. Rowan Atkinson’s rants are really something, a talent I would like, he does have a script though so it’s not really fair.

So I’m gonna sit here for a while and then head for it, no class tomorrow morning which is nice, Dad gets here tomorrow night.

- Sam